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signed W-BOUGUEREAU and dated 1874 (upper left)

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Goupil & Cie., Paris, 1874 (acquired directly from the artist)
Wallis & Co., London, 1874 (acquired from the above)
Miss E. Stange
Sale, Christie's, London, January 30, 1925, lot 73
Mr. Higgins (acquired at the above sale)
Associated Galleries, NYC, 1958
M. Newman Ltd., New York
Mr. Edward Orzac, New York, 1982
Beatrice Fleiss Orzac, 1999
Sale, Christie's, New York, May 2, 2001, lot 29
Richard Green, London
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

Goupil & Cie., Brouillards de Vente, no. 9322
C. Vendryes, Dictionnaire illustré des Beaux-Arts: Bouguereau, éditions L. Baschet: Paris, 1885, p. 51
M. Vachon, W. Bouguereau, Paris, 1900, p. 152
Mark S. Walker, William Bouguereau: A Summary Catalogue of the Paintings, New York, 1991, p. 69
CATALOGUE NOTE

1874 was a difficult year for Bouguereau. His oldest son, George, had begun to exhibit alarming symptoms of the disease that would take his life the following year. On the professional front, the Municipal Council of La Rochelle and the town's Bishop had commissioned Bouguereau to paint the cupola and to design the stained glass and other decorations for the Chapel of the Virgin in the Cathedral of Saint Louis. Perpetually dissatisfied, Bouguereau labored tirelessly over his compositions for the gigantic project. Despite this, however, he found the time and energy to paint fifteen pictures in 1873 and another eighteen in 1874.

Enfant tressant une couronne, also known as La couronne de Marguerites, is a beautiful example of one of Bouguereau's most treasured subjects, a beautiful young girl who engages the viewer with her gaze in a pastoral setting. For Bouguereau, this work represented his own translation of the Virgilian Georgic notion of rural happiness.

The unity of the composition testifies to the artist's painterly skill; his technique is flawless in the rendering of the girl's youthful, diaphanous complexion. The delicate daisies are some of the most beautifully rendered flowers in Bouguereau's entire oeuvre. Painted in the summer of 1874, this work conjures a sweet nostalgic reverie of the environs of La Rochelle that provided Bouguereau a lifelong source of inspiration.

We would like to thank Damien Bartoli for kindly providing this catalogue note (translated from the French). This painting will be included in the forthcoming Bouguereau catalogue raisonné being prepared by Damien Bartoli with the assistance of Fred Ross, the Bouguereau Committee, and the Art Renewal Center, www.artrenewal.org.